You expect it from Johann, but Tariq should know better

I was going to expound on the wretched attack on Respect by Johann Hari (he really, really is just awful, isn't he? How amongst these dark satanic mills did he get a job at the Independent? It's not as if the article is even especially well written or researched, is it? Who the Hell did he have to suck off to get that job?...All right. I'm sorry about that last comment. Out of order. But I mean, really. How does someone like him get an £80,000 a year gig at a national newspaper while NUJ members are toiling away in the provinces for Newsquest on literally a tenth of that salary?) and the mollusc-like level of analysis that has pushed the occasionally, but quite often not, spot-on Tariq Ali to announce in the pages of the Guardian that he is to vote Lib Dem.

But Meaders, of Dead Men Left, who - despite my decidedly good friend Refusenikboy's not liking him very much, I don't think - has had quite a superb last fortnight's worth of postings (really, really quite good, in the way that Hari is not) - has beat me to it, so you might as well just go there instead.

Now, I have my issues with Respect, and how the 57 varieties of Trot organisations in the UK have mutated into 57 varieties of (separate) 'socialist unity' projects, but there are certainly constituencies where I would feel it appropriate to vote for them, in all their Gallowegian indefatigability.